


Return

by sunshinestealer



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Possession, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 20:13:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7283137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshinestealer/pseuds/sunshinestealer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One year after struggling with the aftereffects of his near-death experience, the worst possible thing happens to Wirt - he is brought back to the Unknown by the very Beast he thought had been vanquished.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Return

When he realised where he was, Wirt screamed.

As loud as possible, so that everybody within a 5 mile radius could hear. His cry of anguish even had several of the Unknown’s bird population scattering from their trees for the safety of a higher plane.

When his throat felt raw, he stopped. His body couldn’t stop shaking, as he looked down at his quivering hands. Nothing seemed to still them, even when he thought to stop himself from looking so pathetic.

But he was back here. Back in the Unknown. Pulled back onto his unwanted pilgrimage, because the Beast would not leave him in peace. Unbeknownst to Wirt, the Lord of the Forest had latched onto his soul when he made that dangerous gambit with the Dark Lantern. 

The light (from the lantern?) had briefly blinded them both as Wirt and Greg turned away from the Beast, handed Adelaide's scissors to Beatrice and gave the Woodsman the horrible knowledge of what had truly happened to his daughter. Then he and Greg had been taken from the river, loaded into ambulances and answered the police’s questions. Sara had visited while Wirt was recovering, and the boys’ parents had been adamant that they go to therapy together. Their mother feared the mental consequences of their shared near death experience, and it turned out she was right to.

Wirt had been withdrawn for the first few weeks, his anxieties having found a new subject to latch on to. Now he wasn’t nervously daydreaming about Sara and how he would never be good enough for her. His mind just kept wanting to replay what could have happened in the Unknown. If he’d been just a little bit later in finding Greg, if he hadn’t stopped to consider the folly of the Beast’s offer… His concentration drifted, his appetite waned, and his mood swung on a dime.

Therapy _wasn’t helping_ , he cried one evening to his mother, after his temper had uncharacteristically flared, causing him to curl his fists and grit his teeth.

His mother suggested to talk to another therapist, or to try medication or herbal supplements to control his mood. Or to think of Greg. The boy had sprung back from the horrible experience, which Wirt found an unfair comparison. As the weeks passed, Greg seemed to be recalling less and less of the Unknown. His mind was still malleable, and any bad memories would be shoved deep away. The event would never feel as recent to Greg as it did to Wirt. (And that was a rock fact.)

Greg’s enthusiasm had once been infectious to Wirt, as pained as he was to admit it. Now it either annoyed him or brought only the smallest of smiles. Despite his elder brother’s misery, Greg’s cheerfulness never relented.

But little did Wirt know that his anxieties were the perfect sustenance for a creature that fed upon hope and relished in its victims writhing in despair. Even on days where Wirt ‘did well’, like spending a whole day at school and eating three square meals without feeling sick to his stomach, the little slivers of hope only serving to strengthen the Beast hiding at the back of his mind.

On the anniversary of that Halloween night, Wirt was a shell of his former self. He had been told by his parents that his mind was ‘in the most important’ part of its development, that high school was ‘the best years of his life.’ He certainly didn’t find that to be the case. If he’d have learned that these waking nightmares would come from simply sneaking into a graveyard to get back a cassette tape (that Sara _had_ now listened to, but…), he never would have dragged Greg there in the first place.

He wasn't at school today. His mother and father alternated staying off work, just to keep an eye on their son on his bad days. Wirt knew that it was better to stay in the company of others, distracting his mind with his hobbies. He’d nearly perfected the glissando for Rhapsody in Blue, and Sara had arranged for him to perform it at an informal church concert run by her dad. They stayed in touch through visits and rather old-fashioned methods, writing letters and postcards. Wirt’s stepfather suggested that Sara ‘must be a keeper’, considering how other girls may have run for the hills by now. In her previous letters, she’d noted that her birthday was coming up, and she’d asked her parents for a hi-fi with a tape player.

He was laid on the couch, reading through a biography of Gershwin when it happened. His mother was out on an errand to a neighbour’s house — the worst possible timing. He felt… cold again. Deep down, into his bones. The kind of freezing he hadn’t felt since he was plunged into that river with Greg in tow, and then woken up in the endless forest. (Where it had been inexplicably warmer.) He dropped the book and held his hands over his temples, but it was too late.

His mind was seized, placed into autopilot. He had heard of out-of-body experiences from his therapist, who had a side interest in yoga, sometimes teaching her patients transcendental meditation on request. But he couldn’t imagine it was anything like this. He stood up, robotically, struggling from the rush of blood to his head, but unable to do anything about it. Unable to close his eyes. Unable to move his limbs independently. Unable to scream.

Wirt could only watch on in horror as he was marched out of his house, through the town, and straight back over the garden wall. Back into the Unknown… to carry out the duties the Beast originally intended for him to do.

 

* * *

 

He sobbed in despair, glaring up at the shadowy presence that had now separated itself from the vessel, strengthened anew.

“I am _not_ your Lantern Bearer!” Wirt snapped, disoriented from the sudden warmth in his bones, and the sensation of being able to move freely again.

The Beast hummed, removing that damnable lantern from its cloak. “We made a deal, Pilgrim.”

“Past tense,” Wirt insisted, feeling months’ worth of anger rush inside him. The very same despair-ridden anger he had fought to control around his family and friends this past year. Now he would never see them again. The ferryman had been paid. There was no return trip to the realm of the living.

He started to sob again, but the Beast remained eerily calm.

“Our d-deal was never… it was never…”

“You agreed to light my lantern,” the Beast replied. “Just because I was bested once upon a time does not mean that you are free to shirk your duties, Pilgrim. I brought you back to a world where you will be… _useful_.”

Wirt swore, and the Beast merely chuckled. During their final confrontation, when the light of the lantern had been blown out, the creature had been reduced to the same, pathetic speck of spiritual energy that he fed off of in the form of Edelwood oil. He had had to think fast, grabbing onto the nearest spirit that would revive him, providing sustenance. He could have chosen Greg. He could have chosen the Woodsman, to further extend their ‘special relationship’. But it had been Wirt, the only human who had ever been clever enough to see straight through the Beast’s lies, which had worked on so many unfortunate souls over the aeons. It was a petty vengeance, but the Beast took all promises and deals gravely serious.

The boy had thought he’d ‘bested’ the Unknown. Little did he know that it was _always_ going to be there in his mind. _Always_ going to haunt his nightmares, both sleeping and waking. Why? Because he was the Beast’s Lantern Bearer. The further he was away from the woods, the worse he would feel, both spiritually and emotionally.

The Beast was rather perturbed by the state of the Unknown since its enforced absence. The creature could usually hear a symphony of sounds — the song of the Edelwoods, the hum of the souls travelling through the woods, the gentle sounds of the forest. Now it was replaced with a deathly silence. Just as it had been when the creature had first manifested. However many millennia ago that was.

But that would all change now. The Beast grinned from ear to ear at the prospect of his return. The people living within the Unknown would have gotten careless, allowing their children to play out in the forest after dark. Going out hunting or foraging in inclement weather. Once upon a time, the Beast would have swept in to divert their course, making them hopelessly lost in the winter wilds. Now, they would probably have been able to follow the path back home, joking to their significant others that their sojourn into the woods had just been a little mistake, and they were truly sorry for the worry they had caused them. Then everything would go back to normal, happy families. Not quite what the Beast wanted — the victims who abandoned their shelters in order to find their missing relatives and loved ones, falling prey to the same fate among the trees.

The Beast assumed that the witches had probably taken up this line of work, although they were greedier with the souls they managed to catch. Rather uncouth as well, in the Beast’s opinion, leaving the husks of physical bodies at the edge of Pottsfield for Enoch, rather than recycling the flesh and bones into the Edelwood. 

But it was still… disquieting to hear the forest so silent.

Wirt screamed again. The Beast let him.

Wirt tried to run away. The Beast stopped him in place.

They both had much work to do…


End file.
